Policies

Today my mission is to decide which of the fools running for the State election deserves my vote. So in saying that, I have sent the following email to them...

Hi,

With all the crap going on in Federal politics, the Qld election is getting a bit lost. I am wanting to know, what policies you will look to bring into place to help carers?

As a background –

We have a 23 year old son with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The only movement in his whole body is very small moves of his hands. This means he can drive his electric chair and use the computer, using the on screen keyboard. His mind and speech are the same as any young man his age.

We do not have any hour of the day or night that we don’t need to do something for him. If he wants to be fed, toileted, arms or legs moved, scratched etc, we have to do it. On a good night, he will get rolled every hour, on a bad night, it can be every 20mins.

What we receive is 2 hours personal care 4 nights a week, 1 day of 7 hours, that Ryan uses to go out with a carer to see friends, job search etc, and we have 2 nights that we have carers come in from 11pm to 6am so we can get some sleep and this we contribute out of our pockets to.

So out of 168 hours a week that we have to give care, we get 29 hours help. Not much is it?

We are getting older, having trouble keeping up care and everywhere we turn for help, we are told they don’t have enough funding.

So my question is, what are you going to do, to help carers like us?

Thank you

Kerrie Czernia

Lets see who replies and what the response is. I am sick of ringing up and being told 'No, we can't help'. It's not even much we have been asking for - 2 hours a fortnight. 

The older we get, the less help we get and the harder it gets. 

It is time they started to look after carers, who for many documented years, have problems with back, arthritis, depression and a whole host of conditions. For the sake of an extra couple of thousand a year, they could save thousands through Medicare on carer illness.